“It is not enough that Tina Davidson goes into high schools and community centers and coaxes composition out of unsuspecting victims. She also remains a composer with a consistently persuasive voice of her own.”
Peter Dobrin, Philadelphia Inquirer
Tina Davidson has been at the forefront of community outreach for over twenty years, teaching her Young Composers program to at-risk children in public schools, creating works for students to perform side by side with professional musicians, residencies in community settings, and works for family audiences.
Young Composers
Tina Davidson created the Young Composersprogram in 1994 to enable all people, young and old, musically trained or not, to benefit from the act of creating, performing, and enjoying music.
Davidson teaches her Young Composers residencies throughout the Philadelphia area, New Jersey and Central Pennsylvania, both in public and private schools, as well as in community centers. Young Composers is a flexible program ideally suited for all grades. The workshop sessions are composed of multiple teaching sessions, plus a dress rehearsal and a performance.
Unique Activities Include
- Inventing their own instruments out of found materials (tin cans, wire, bottles and beads)
- Creating their own musical notation symbols (graphic, invented, and classical notation)
- Journaling – a record of personal reflections that translate a sensory experience into a literary context about their own creative journey of becoming a composer
- Rehearsing and performing their own compositions for the school community (scored for hand-made or traditional instruments)
“I found Young Composers to be intriguing and productive. Watching the program has informed me and changed my own teaching practices. I would recommend Young Composers as an excellent and unique opportunity for children to experience first-hand musical composition and a marvelous foray into the world of creativity and disciplined self-expression.” (Linda White, teacher, McMichael School)
“This was all my own; it was my music and my conducting — it was all me, and I was really proud of that.” (Brandi, age 14, McMichael School)
Playing Side by Side with Professionals
Davidson often creates works so that students or amateur musicians have the opportunity to rehearse and perform with professional performers. These works provide a riveting experience for everyone – professional performers, students, and audiences, and are ideal for workshops that are part of a performing engagement at colleges and music schools. By allowing inexperienced musicians into the process of professional performance, they are infected with true spirit of music.
PAPER, GLASS, STRING & WOOD for string quartet and 1-2 student quartets
“The idea was for the fledglings to play elbow-to-elbow with the pros, gaining experience in real music, and, as more than one optimist has put it, perhaps consider music as a career option. Such acts of altruism rarely succeed in their dual mission. They mostly achieve their social goal; it’s the real-music part that gets lost in the process.
“But that’s where Paper, Glass, String & Wood is different. It is real music, with structure, mood, novelty and harmonic sophistication – with haunting melodies that grow out of complex, repetitive rhythms.” (The Philadelphia Inquirer)
Paper, Glass, String & Wood excerpts:
FIRST LIGHT for very young string players, string orchestra (or string quartet)
Created for beginning string players to perform with professional strings, the work opens up with a plaintive melody for the young players. Each string section is slowly added, the work concludes with a joyous finale.
Video: Lancaster Symphony Orchestra:
RENDER (2016) for string quartet and young string players
Written for the Cassatt Quartet with the option of performing with students or amateur ensemble of strings in two bookends – short pieces that serve as a prelude and postlude to the main work.
Residencies
Residencies have been at the heart of Tina Davidson’s work in community settings. In addition to teaching participants to compose their own music, she composes original works specifically for her resident ensemble.
Fiddler’s Delight is an example of her residency work – a wonderful combination of teaching, creating, rehearsing and performing. For over five months, Tina Davidson worked with Musicopia String Orchestra, a 60-member city and suburban musicians, ages 8 to 17.
“I’m building ownership of music,” said Davidson in a Philadelphia Inquirer article. “I want people to say, ‘This is my art form. I can do this.’ I want them to go into a music hall and say, ‘I could write something like that.’”
In the first several months, she worked with students in sessions aimed at giving them a general ease with creation of music in any guise. They built their own instruments with found materials, and wrote music for their instruments and for the string orchestra. Davidson wrote Musicopia three new works, one for the full ensemble, anther containing of students melodies and a final piece which included their beginning string players.
Works for Family Audiences
Tina Davidson often creates works that are specifically designed for families to enjoy. The Selkie Boy was commissioned by the Greater Twin Cities Youth Orchestras, and has been performed by The Philadelphia Orchestra, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and others. The opera, The Summer of the Swans, written for both adults and children to perform, was premiered by Central Pennsylvania Youth Opera and Capitol Opera Harrisburg.
THE SELKIE BOY, for narrator and orchestra, is based on an old Scottish folk-tale about selkies, or seals. The story tells of a little boy named Willie, who is found on the beach of the Orkney Islands and is adopted by a large family. Somehow he never feels as if he fits in, and longs for the sea and the selkies. Through the help of a little girl, he learns that the selkies are magical folk – changelings, who can shed their skins and walk on the earth. If, however, they lose their skins, they cannot go back to their seal life. By returning to the ocean and weeping seven tears into the water, Willie is able to speak to the selkies and finds out his true identity.
“The concert was full with beautiful music waves.” (Angela, age 11)
The Selkie Boy excerpts:
SUMMER OF THE SWANS is based on the Newbery Award winning novel for young people by Betsy Byars. The work explores contemporary culture as it grapples with how to accept diversity and disabilities.
At the heart of Summer of the Swans are themes of love, family, forgiveness and reconciliation, and, most importantly, difference. Sara, just fourteen, is wrestling with the adolescence, the loss of her mother, and the absence of her father. Charlie, her younger brother, has cognitive disabilities and lives in his own silent world. When Charlie gets lost, Sara goes out to search for him. After a long search, she finally finds him, and a new understanding and compassion for those who are different.
Summer of the Swans “demonstrates both the hurdles of disability for a family – and the gifts that come of it.” (The Sentinel)
Summer of the Swans, scored for five voices (soprano, mezzo-soprano, alto, tenor and boy soprano), children’s chorus, clarinet, bassoon, string quartet, and percussion, is approximately one hour in length.
Outreach activities include an educational program storybook, consultations with siblings of children with disabilities, and post-performance audience conversation about issues raised in the opera and the book.
If you are interested in Summer of the Swans please contact Beyond the Blue Horizon Music, bbhm@tinadavidson.com.
View interactive site for Summer of the Swans
